Cees Nooteboom – författare

Arthur Daane, holländare i Berlin, är dokumentärfilmare. Till sina medarbetares förtret börjar han sina filmprojekt med - ingenting. Samlar bilder på måfå. Helst skulle han vilja dokumentera bara gryningen eller skymningen; övergångar mellan tillstånd. Elik Oranje är historiker och arbetar med spansk medeltid; spillhögar av kunskap, resten fiktion. Båda är de intensivt upptagna av frågan om av vad »historia« är för någonting, nämligen: allt som försvinner. Inget är falskare än Monumentet. Ta bara Berlinmuren. Den bar upp en världsordning, av terror och osmält förflutet. Några år senare är den borta. Då är det som om den aldrig funnits. Alla själars dag [»Allerzielen«, 1999] är Cees Nootebooms hyllade roman om Berlin, skriven på plats i samband med murens fall, när skotthål i väggarna fanns kvar från krigets sista dagar, Speers metallampor på Bismarckstrasse, nära Hitlers bunker och Gestapos tortyrkammare. En sällsynt nyansrik roman dokumenterande Europas illusioner. I översättning av Per Holmer.

Cees Nooteboom, f. 1933 i Haag, Nederländerna, har skrivit närmare sextio böcker. Förutom romaner och poesi ett stort antal reseskildringar. Han finns i dag översatt till 26 språk. Sedan många år nämns han bland kandidater till Nobelpriset.

»Cees Nooteboom står sig som en lika värdig som oefterhärmlig röst bland samtida författare.« THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

»Nooteboom är en författare med stora teman, men han är aldrig tungläst. Han bäddar in filosofi i vardagsbetraktelser, plötsligt framträder idéerna, oväntat, hisnande, som änglar gömda i övergivna skåp.« THE WASHINGTON POST

Om Modernistas tidigare Nooteboom-utgivning:

»Cees Nooteboom hör till de stora vågbrytarna inom den europeiska litteraturen. Modernistas återutgivning av tre av hans kortromaner är en välkommen litterär händelse.« GUNDER ANDERSSON, AFTONBLADET

»Att läsa Cees Nooteboom är som att komma i samspråk med en äldre excentriker på ett kafé på kontinenten. Man studsar till ibland och förstår inte allt, men det gör ingenting. Den buttra charmen vinner över allt. Man har roligt nästan hela tiden.« NILS FORSBERG, EXPRESSEN

»Cees Nooteboom speglar vårt behov av sagor samtidigt som han gestaltar den misslyckade myten, vår eviga jakt på det förflutnas förlorade skönhet. Att läsa hans romaner är att ge sig ut på resa mot verkligheten längs diktens avvägar.« ANN LINGEBRANDT, HD

»Som kritiker lider jag förstås av överläsning, blir helt färdig med litteraturen. Så kommer Nooteboom där och är större, låter sig inte kritiseras efter standard och vilja.« JAN-OLOV NYSTRÖM, NORRBOTTENSKURIREN

»Elegant är ett ord som fångar hans prosa.« KRISTIAN EKENBERG, ARBETARBLADET

»Cees Nooteboom är en fängslande författare som i sina vackert glidande texter gör varje ögonblick till ett gäckande undantag av djup även om det inträffar just inom den bleka vardagens bastanta ram med alla dess tyngande förutsättningar.« BENNY HOLMBERG, TIDNINGEN KULTUREN

Set in the cities and islands of the Mediterranean, and linked thematically, the eight stories in The Foxes Come At Night read more like a novel, a meditation on memory, life and death. Their protagonists collect and reconstruct fragments of lives lived intensely, and now lost, crystallized in memory or in the detail of a photograph. In ''Paula'', the narrator evokes the mysterious, brief life of a woman he once loved; in ''Paula II'', the same woman is aware of the man thinking of her. No longer a body, she is slowly fading into the distance, remembering the time they spent together, and his fear of the black night when the foxes appear. And yet the tone of these stories is far from pessimistic: it seems that death is nothing to be afraid of. Nooteboom is a superb stylist who observes the world with a combination of melancholy and astonishment. These stories are textured with humour, pathos and vast knowledge, the hallmarks of this outstanding and highly respected European writer.

"You might think there is little new to say about Venice, but Cees Nooteboom strolls down many under-explored alleyways in the city, his insights coloured by his knowledge of art and literature as welll as his past experiences . . . Witty and meditative by turns, the overall effect is like being shown around by a wonderfully self-effacing, but impressively erudite guide" The Sunday Times BOOKS OF THE YEAR"Nooteboom has achieved the impossible: to say something new about the ageless city about which everything has been said" ALBERTO MANGUEL"The whole book is the illuminating testimony of a man who cannot look away and so sees things that others, even those with more specialist knowledge, have missed, whether it be the color and consistency ofthe ropes on the vaporetti, the glistening hues and squirming movements of the fish at the market, or the wondrous effects that Tintoretto could achieve with dabs of white in ''the gleam of armour, the folds in a sleeve, the windings of a turban, the halo of a man of the air who, as in the Last Judgment, is flying throughspace, in a wide flowing cloak . . .''" GREGORY DOWLING, Wall Street JournalVENICE: "A dream of palaces and churches, of power and money, dominion and decline, a paradise of beauty." By the author of Roads to Santiago and Roads to BerlinWith this treasury of his time spent in Venice over a period of fifty-five years, Nooteboom makes himself the indispensable companion for all lovers of "the sailing, amphibious city", and for every new visitor.Because he is a master storyteller with an inexhaustible curiosity, and always with a suitcase of books (to which new discoveries are added), he brings vividly and poetically to life not only the tumultuous history of the Republic but along the way its doges, its villains, its heroes, its magnificent painters, its architects, its scholars, its skies, its canals and piazzas and alleyways, and on his expeditions its "bronze voices of time".Those who know and love this city and its literature will recognise Nooteboom - in Laura Watkinson''s fine translation - as the dazzling heir and companion to Montaigne, Thomas Mann, Rilke, Ruskin, Proust, Brodsky, and Donna Leon. His homage to Venice is a generous introduction, learned and enchanting, and worthy of its magnificent subject."His writing is lyrical and densely textured. He is a poet of time and memory" - COLIN THUBRONTranslated from the Dutch by Laura Watkinson

"A lyrical ''book of days'' . . . A bejewelled mosaic" Financial Times"Humane, insightful and deeply cultured" Times Literary SupplementThough a tireless explorer of distant cultures, for more than forty years Cees Nooteboom has also been returning to Menorca, "the island of the wind", and it is in his house there, with a study full of books and a garden taken over by cacti and many insects, that the 533 days of writing take place. The result is not a diary, nor a set of movements of the soul organised by dates, but "a book of days", with observations about what is immediately around him, his love for Menorca, his thoughts on the world, on life and death, on literature and oblivion. Every impression opens windows onto vast horizons: the Divine Comedy and the books it generated, the contempt of Borges for Gombrowicz, the death of David Bowie, the endless flight of the Voyagers, the repetition of history as a tragedy, but never as farce. 533 is a meditative rhapsody that would like to exclude the noise of current events, yet must return to them several times, and sceptically contemplates the threat of a disintegrating Europe. Reading this book is like having an extraordinary conversation with an extraordinary mind."The very first pages are so powerful that you suspect the author must have binned the preceding pages that were needed to climb to such heights" De Volkskrant"The 533 days captivate in their undisguised openness to the world" Süddeutsche Zeitung Photographs by Simone Sassen * Translated from the Dutch by Laura Watkinson

"An outstanding addition to an impressive oeuvre" Times Literary SupplementArthur Daane, a documentary film-maker and inveterate globetrotter, wanders the streets of Berlin, a city whose recent past provides the perfect backdrop for his reflections on life and the universe as he collects images for his latest project - a film that will show the world through his eyes.With his circle of friends - a philosopher, a sculptor and a physicist - Daane discusses everything from history to metaphysics and the meaning of our contemporary existence, often over a hearty meal. Then, one cold winter''s day, Daane meets the history student Elik Oranje and his world is turned upside down. And when she unexpectedly leaves the city for Spain, Daane is compelled to follow.All Souls'' Day is an elegiac love story, a poignant and affecting tale in which the city of Berlin plays a prominent role, by one of Europe''s major contemporary writers.Translated from the Dutch by Susan Massotty"Displays with admirable lucidity the workings of a humane, civilized, and consistently interesting mind" Kirkus Reviews"One of the most remarkable writers of our time" ALBERTO MANGUEL

A morose provincial inspector of roads in Aragon settles down to write the fable of the Snow Queen. The Netherlands has now been stretched into a vast country with Northern flatlands and hazardous Alpine ranges in the south. Kai and Lucia are circus illusionists, and when Kai is kidnapped, Lucia must rescue him from the Snow Queen''s palace. In the Dutch Mountains is an elegantly constructed story within a story, laced with the wit that characterises the work of this outstanding European writer.

In Rituals, Amsterdam of the fifties, sixties and seventies is viewed from the perspective of the capricious Inni Wintrop. An unintentional suicide survivor, the unexpected gift of life returned lends him the curiousity, and impartiality, to survey others'' lives and rountines. Inni''s opposite, the one-eyed downhill skier Arnold Taads measures his life by the clock, while his disowned son Philip follows Japanese rituals which themselves seem to render his existence meaningless. A novel for those who seek to unravel our mysterious, apparently directionless lives...

Roads to Berlin maps the changing landscape of Germany, from the period before the fall of the Wall to the present. Written and updated over the course of several decades, an eyewitness account of the pivotal events of 1989 gives way to a perceptive appreciation of its difficult passage to reunification. Nooteboom''s writings on politics, people, architecture and culture are as digressive as they are eloquent; his innate curiosity takes him through the landscapes of Heine and Goethe, steeped in Romanticism and mythology, and to Germany''s baroque cities. With an outsider''s objectivity he has crafted an intimate portrait of the country to its present day.